Current Efforts

• Tray-less dining in both Brittain and Woodruff Dining halls saves 3,000 gallons of water per day, along with saving energy and chemical use as well. MORE
• Preventing paper waste by putting napkins in dispensers vs. in an open basket saves an average of 70.61 trees per year. MORE
• Many of the to-go containers in WOW, and the Food Court are biodegradable.
• Educating students on Sustainability through both the Sustainability wall located in Brittain, Woodruff, and the Food Court, and Sustainability Trivia.
• GT Dining collects used cooking oil from all of our kitchens, including both dining halls, and WOW, filters the used oil, making it cleaner and purer and then transports it off campus to be created into biodiesel fuel. MORE
• All napkins used in GT Dining locations are made from recycled material.
• Pandini’s recycles approximately 250 pizza boxes a week.
• To help reduce greenhouse gases and to conserve water, GT Dining deep cleans its floors, walls, and other surfaces with a steam cleaner that requires little water and no chemicals.
• Local produce accounts for 16% of the total produce served in all GT Dining locations.
• GT Dining meets frequently with Students Organizing Sustainability (S.O.S.), a student group on campus, always looking to improve our vegetarian and vegan options.
• All of the containers for Freshens are Eco-Containers. In a compost pile, they will totally decompose in 10 weeks.
• Managers have completed Sustainability 101 and 201 online courses offered by Sodexo.
• Employees have been educated about sustainability and going forward all new employees will be required to take training.
• All vegetarian and vegan options are identified at each of our retail locations, as well as on our website.
• Donations made to the Atlanta Food Bank
• Apex Ecolab chemicals used: reduces plastic waste, natural gas, water and energy.
• Organic Fair-Trade coffees
• Grounds for Growth, a program implemented at Seattle’s Best Coffee, reduces water waste by giving away used coffee grounds for mulching in gardens.
• In the GT Dining Administrative Office, 30% post-consumer recycled paper is now used. The office recycles approximately 1-2 bins per week of paper. Each bin is 2.5 cubic feet, saving that much landfill space by recycling. The office now scans approximately 600 pages per week that were previously copied and mailed. Just by scanning alone, the office saves ½ case of paper per week.
• We stated the Recycle Mug Program in Fall 09.
• GT Dining is working with Greenco Environmental , a composting company, to reduce waste in the dining halls. All food wastes will be composted instead of put into a land fill and returned to campus to be used as fertilizer.
• GT Dining removed all Styrofoam cups from all locations

Future Efforts

• GT Dining has made it a goal and a top priority to reduce our carbon footprint by 26% in the future. MORE
• Extending the grounds for growth program to include all coffee concepts.